“Yes, I have.” No hesitation, no hint of bluffing. She didn’t need to bluff. Her tone convinced him; his smile fell, and he backed off.
Everyone watched him now, the one who would decide. His gang would listen to him. But Maggie and the other doctors were the ones who could fix things.
“Okay. Fine. This whole place is off limits. I’ll spread the word.”
“And you’ll make sure we stay safe.”
“As much as anyone can stay safe.”
Maggie and the others closed back to the table in a flurry of action. Low-voiced commands and bits of information passed back and forth. In moments an impromptu surgery was underway.
Maggie said, “You all should probably wait outside.”
A spike of tension followed, both strangers poised to lunge forward again. As if the doctors would really do something nefarious if they weren’t supervised. Kath reasserted herself and the shotgun.
The clinic director made a calming gesture. “My people need room and quiet to work, it’s better if you wait.” She added, “One of you can stay to watch. Her—”
She nodded to the woman with the leather jacket and wary gaze looking past too much eye makeup. And where had she found a stash of useable eyeliner? “Why her?” the man asked.
“Because she’s quiet.”
“Cynthia?”
She nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
“There are chairs in the waiting room,” Kath said, trying to sound neutral, if not friendly. Nodding, he went out.
Dennis had managed to kick out both of the gang members in his room. His patient was sedated now, finally quiet. The medical team was busy with gauze, alcohol, forceps, removing bullets from legs. Melanie glanced up once and gave Kath a thin smile. Kath smiled back, unsure who was comforting whom.
She stayed in the corridor, keeping watch over both rooms and the waiting room. There, the gang members had settled down. Too tired to argue anymore, maybe. One of them had even fallen asleep.
The clinic treatment rooms were made for routine outpatient care, not trauma. But Maggie, Dennis, and the others made do. By morning the two injured men were bandaged, sedated, and recovering quietly. Splashes of blood and red-stained gauze littered the floors, and a whole tray of scalpels and forceps and other instruments lay piled on a tray by the autoclave in the back supply room. The medicals were trying to clean up, wiping down surfaces, peeling off latex gloves. Wiping faces on sleeves and looking out, shell-shocked.
Maggie made a trip to the back supply room. When the woman, Cynthia, followed, Kath quietly moved in behind her. Just to keep an eye on her.
Cynthia glared a moment. “Can you close the door? Just for a minute.”
Kath looked at Maggie. Confused, Maggie nodded. Kath shut the door and waited, hands ready on her weapon.
Then Cynthia said, whispering, “Can you help me not get pregnant?”
Maggie froze a moment, processing. The woman pursed her lips and seemed to be holding her breath. When Maggie didn’t answer right away, Cynthia tried again. “I mean if I wanted an IUD or something, could you do that?”
“Yes, we can do that. We’ll have to do a pregnancy test first—are you pregnant?”
Cynthia’s eyes widened. She looked terrified. “Oh God I hope not, I don’t want to be, that’s why I was asking—”
“But you might be,” Maggie asked, and Cynthia ducked her face to hide spilling tears. Maggie touched her shoulder. “Come on, let’s check. Not a big deal. Kath, come in back and help me clear off that table.”
They went to the back exam room where they’d been stockpiling canned food. Kath had to shift boxes so Cynthia had somewhere to sit, while Maggie dug around one of the cupboards. Cynthia talked. Rambled.
“Adam, the big guy who does all the talking… he’s taking care of me. He’s promised to take care of me.”
“You could take care of yourself,” Maggie muttered.
“Don’t judge me,” Cynthia said through gritted teeth. “Fucking that man is keeping me alive right now. I can’t not do it, I can’t force him to wear condoms, and I do not want to have a baby.”
Maggie looked away.
Cynthia continued. “My… my sister got pregnant. I’d managed to keep her with me all this time, I’d promised to take care of her. But seven months in she got sick. Massive headache, vomiting, cramping. Then seizures.”
“Sounds like eclampsia,” Maggie said. “It’s a thing that happens sometimes. We might have been able to help her, but maybe not.”
“I couldn’t save her. The baby killed her, and it isn’t supposed to be like that, I don’t want to go through that. There’d be no one to help me.”
The whole thing took maybe half an hour. Maggie had Cynthia go back to the bathroom to pee in a cup. The test came back negative, and Cynthia started crying again. Maggie coaxed her to undress and pulled out the stirrups on the table. “Kath, why don’t you see how they’re doing up front?”
Kath ducked out.
Both injured men were stable. Dennis was in the waiting room, talking to the gang’s leader, Adam.
“They shouldn’t be moved for at least a couple of days. Especially not if you’re going to shove them in a car and bounce them around—”
“Hey!”
Dennis put up a calming hand and tried again. “You can leave them here, no problem. And yes, any food you want to give us will be appreciated.”
“And protection,” he said, his curled lip almost making it a sneer.
“We’re the only medical help for a hundred miles around. Maybe more. Your people would be dead now. You tell me whether or not we deserve protecting.”
Adam didn’t have anything to say to that.
Cynthia and Maggie emerged a little while later. Cynthia looked tired, shadows under her eyes, a slump in her shoulders. But she also seemed determined. An edge of that ever-present anxiety was gone. Kath was close enough to hear Maggie say to her, almost under her breath, “We’ve got a cupboard full of IUDs. I think we even have a few diaphragms stashed away somewhere. Tell your friends. We’ll help anyone with birth control, no barter needed. Spread the word.”
Cynthia nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
In what Kath thought was a gesture of supreme goodwill, Maggie invited Adam and his gang to stay for the day, to get some sleep, and to share breakfast. Kath realized later the underlying motive: make the clinic compound feel like home. Make it feel safe, and give them a stake in keeping it that way. They declined, however. Adam muttered something about not wanting to feel even more indebted. Cynthia took hold of his arm, whispered something, and the man settled.
They agreed to leave their injured and return for them in two days. That gave the clinic a couple more days to get them as strong as possible, and make sure infection didn’t set in. They had a pretty good track record with this sort of thing so far, but it would only take one death from sepsis to undo everything.
The stakes seemed so high, for everything they did.
“We’re running out,” Dennis said, as they stood on the barricade, watching the caravan drive away, tires kicking up chips of broken asphalt.
“Of what?” Maggie said tiredly.
“Everything, really. But specifically—I think we should try to start growing some penicillin.”
She stared. “Can we do that?”
“I think we can. I think we have to.”
Maggie bowed her head. “What you’re saying is you don’t think this is ever going to end. It’s never going to go back to the way it was.”
“No,” he said, folding her into his arms when she started to cry.
Technically, Kath’s watch shift ended hours ago. A second night on her feet, she ought to be exhausted. But her nerves were wired, her skin itched. She set off for a circuit around the barricade. Still had the shotgun slung over her shoulder, shells hanging in her pocket.